James Rodríguez is to take a brief holiday before joining up with Real Madrid. Photograph: Daniel Ochoa De Olza/AP

The Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti has said he bought James Rodríguez for the future after the purchase of the new Colombian superstar appeared to give the European champions a preponderance of world-class midfielders.

Asked whether Real actually needed their new No10, Ancelotti said of the 23-year-old: “Madrid’s history will tell you that they always want to have the best players and ones with a future. We have signed one of the World Cup’s stars. You need these kinds of players for the future, not just for the present, too.”

Rodríguez joined from Monaco for £63m on Tuesday and will join up with his new team-mates on 1 August along with France’s World Cup players Karim Benzema and Raphaël Varane.

“James finished the World Cup on 30 June and needs a month of holidays and a break,” Ancelotti, speaking in Los Angeles where Real are on tour,” told As. “He will start on 1 August with Benzema and Varane.”

The coach would not be drawn on Real’s expected move for the £8m Costa Rica goalkeeper Keylor Navas from Levante and suggested that Iker Casillas could was still in contention to be the No1 choice, despite recent evidence suggesting that the club captain had entered an irrevocable decline.

“Keylor isn’t a Real Madrid player. Right now we have the same three keepers as last year. We are in pre-season,” he said. “Iker only started training today. For us the goalkeeper isn’t an issue. Last year there were debates about it, but not for me. I’m going to decide at the start of the season who will be the starting keeper. Iker starts at the same level as the others.”

When it was put to him that Casillas, who also captains Spain, had had a poor World Cup compared to Navas, Ancelotti laughed and then said: “Right now comparing Casillas with Navas is very easy. Spain’s bad World Cup was just like Italy’s and England’s. Spain won the World Cup in 2010, and these things happen in football. Spain will once again be competitive soon.”

Real, meanwhile, could face the returning Luis Suárez in the first Clásico of the season after the Spanish fixtures were published this week.

The game is scheduled for the weekend when Suárez’s ban expires, 25 or 26 October. Television demands are likely to dictate the actual day of the match so if the game takes place on the Saturday, the Uruguayan will not be able to play, but if it is held on the Sunday, he could make his Barça debut in the world’s biggest club game.